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WASHINGTON — President Obama’s unusual challenge to the Arizona state law cracking down on illegal immigration could endanger Democratic candidates in key races around the country, experts said yesterday.

“It inflames the Tea Party,” said Tamar Jacoby, president of the pro-immigrant group ImmigrationWorks USA.

“The federal government’s jamming a Statehouse is not going to be taken lightly by the Tea Party,” she said.

“This is taking a big stick and beating the Tea Party hornets’ nest.”

National polling has shown that the Arizona law, which had been due to take effect later this month and would give police broader authority to question people they stop about their legal status, is popular with voters.

A Pew Research poll conducted after the Arizona law was passed found that 59 percent of Americans supported the effort to crack down on illegal immigration.

Jacoby said that injecting a very complex issue like immigration into 30-second campaign ads will only hurt Democratic efforts to find a way to legalize illegal aliens currently in the United States.

Some Democratic consultants — especially those operating outside of DC — say Obama has jumped in on the wrong side of the issue.

Voters are “more likely to agree with Arizona than with anything that is perceived as pro-immigrant,” said a Democratic consultant working in the Midwest.

Some members of Obama’s party moved quickly to denounce his meddling.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat who won her Arizona House seat on Obama’s coattails in 2008, dismissed the lawsuit against the immigration law as a “sideshow.”

The issue has potential to be devastating for Democrats far from the border as well, in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania where there are few Hispanic voters and blue-collar anxiety about illegal immigration runs high.

A recent poll showed 58 percent of Pennsylvanians support the Arizona law. By a margin of 55 percent to 34 percent, Ohioans said they would support a similar law in their state.

Also quick to desert the president are Republicans who in the past have taken flak from their own side to help Obama find some middle ground to fix the system.

Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has been a leading Republican ally of Obama’s on immigration reform said Obama would be much better off getting his Democratic Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.